te after
minute passed by, perhaps ten minutes passed, and the shadow on the moon
perceptibly widened. He heard a rustling on his left hand, a cloaked
figure with an upturned face appeared at the base of the Barrow, and
Clym descended. In a moment the figure was in his arms, and his lips
upon hers.

"My Eustacia!"

"Clym, dearest!"

Such a situation had less than three months brought forth.

They remained long without a single utterance, for no language could
reach the level of their condition--words were as the rusty implements
of a by-gone barbarous epoch, and only to be occasionally tolerated.

"I began to wonder why you did not come," said Yeobright, when she had
withdrawn a little from his embrace.

"You said ten minutes after the first mark of shade on the edge of the
moon, and that's what it is now."

"Well, let us only think that here we are."

Then, holding each other's hand, they were again silent, and the shadow
on the moon's disc grew a little larger.

"Has it seemed long since you last saw me?" she asked.

"It has seemed sad."

"And not long? That's because you occupy yourself, and so blind yourself
to my absence. To me, who can do nothing, it has been like living under
stagnant water."

"I would rather bear tediousness, dear, than have time made short by
such means as have shortened mine."

"In what way is that? You have been thinking you wished you did not love
me."

"How can a man wish that, and yet love on? No, Eustacia."

"Men can, women cannot."

"Well, whatever I may have thought, one thing is certain--I do love
you--past all compass and description. I love you to oppressiveness--I,
who have never before felt more than a pleasant passing fancy for any
woman I have ever seen. Let me look right into your moonlit face and
dwell on every line and curve in it! Only a few hairbreadths make the
difference between this face and faces I have seen many times before I
knew you; yet what a difference--the difference between everything and
nothing at all. One touch on that mouth again! there, and there, and
there. Your eyes seem heavy, Eustacia."

"No, it is my general way of looking. I think it arises from my feeling
sometimes an agonizing pity for myself that I ever was born."

"You don't feel it now?"

"No. Yet I know that we shall not love like this always. Nothing can
ensure the continuance of love. It will evaporate like a spirit, and so
I feel full of fears."

"You need not."